In 1986 the General Assembly in its Declaration on the Right
to Development (GA Res 41/128 of 4 December 1986) formulated the
right to development in terms that "The right to development
is an inalienable human right by virtue of which every human
person and all peoples are entitled to participate in, contribute
to, and enjoy economic, social, cultural, and political
development, in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms
can be fully realized."

It is not proposed in this chapter to enter into
jurisprudential discussions on the question of the status of this
right in terms of international law or rigorous legal analysis.
It is sufficient for our purposes if we recognize its existence,
even as an evolving norm.

Nor is it proposed to attempt definitions of the concept of
development, except to observe that development will not be taken
as being confined to economic or material advancement, but is
conceived of rather as "the upward movement of the entire
social system and in conditions which afford individual members
of the society the opportunity to benefit personally from the
upward movement."'

To what extent, then, can technology (I use the term here as a
shorthand expression for "science and technology,"
especially as it is the practical applications of science that
concern us most in relation to the developing world) be used to
promote the objectives encapsulated in the General Assembly's
definition of the right to development?

It will be seen that there are three principal elements
involved, namely

(1) participation in decision-making regarding the
introduction of a new technology,
(2) contribution to the creation of the technology in
question; and
(3) enjoyment of the development resulting from technology.

The development itself could be economic, social, cultural, or
political

PARTICIPATION

Where technology is of a sophisticated nature the stages of
participation and contribution tend to be long delayed. There is
also a greater tendency for the creators and the owners of the
technology to keep to themselves the decision-making process
regarding their product and adaptations. They tend to delay even
more resolutely the process of scientific input into the
technology itself. Thus, far from there being a spontaneous
spread of technology and industrialization as some theorists once
expected (cf. theories of the spontaneous spread of capitalism),
the events especially of the past half century have shown that
technology which is of monetary value tends to become
concentrated in the hands of those who create or own it, thus
confining it largely to the developed world. This is despite
theories of freedom of scientific knowledge. Although there is a
desperate need for that technology in the developing world, the
latter seems unable to draw the technology to itself and absorb
it into its own social and cultural milieu. If it comes in, it
does so with strings attached which can be manipulated from afar.
It assumes a place in developing societies very much like that of
a foreign body in a biological system, which never integrates
fully with its host.

Contrary therefore to the theory that knowledge is universal,
technological knowledge seems to belong and to retain the
semblance of belonging to the developed world, wherever it may be
actually applied.

A principal reason for this is the lack of third-world
participation and contribution, as outlined above. Through such
lack of participation, attitudes have evolved of viewing modern
technology as a distant and foreign thing.

This sentiment often manifests itself in a plan for the total
rejection of Western science, such as was voiced by some
delegates at the recent conference on "Crisis in Modern
Science" held at Penang, Malaysia in 1987 and hosted by the
Third World Network and the Consumers' Association of Penang.
Some advocates of Islamic and Hindu science, pointing to the
undoubted fact that science had made considerable independent and
pioneering progress under these systems, sought to detach science
from its existing international base and build it up anew on
their own cultural base.2

This is in this writer's view not a realistic option and the
universalism of science must be adopted even in countries which
see themselves as its exploited victims. It is by participation
and contribution that such attitudes of alienation can be averted
and full use made of the beneficial potential of science and
technology for every society. Everything traditional can
sometimes be romanticized at too high a cost. An effort is
therefore required to accelerate the ability of developing
countries to participate in and contribute to such technology.

This brings us to an issue which lies very much at the heart
of the problem - the way in which it tends to be assumed that the
developing world's role is that of passive receiver of technology
rather than of active determinant of the particular technology it
will receive. It is true there are many situations where the
freedom to choose is circumscribed, at the same time the range of
choices available is often much larger than is commonly supposed.

Elsewhere in this volume, and especially in the chapter by Dr
Chamarik, the point is made that a conscious choice on the part
of the recipient country must determine what technology it will
accept or reject. That choice is not purely a scientific one, but
depends upon social and economic factors and the expertise of
many disciplines. This becomes all the more important when we
realize that science is essentially a social product. Its
development in Europe reflected a particular socio-economic
context and as it developed it interacted in that socio-economic
context to provide a new set of needs which it began to serve.
Technology has an even more intimate interaction in society than
pure science.3 All of this interaction, heavily
influenced by Western needs and norms, can well render a
particular technology ill suited for a totally different
third-world context - hence the importance of participation in
determining the technology.

A prime factor in this process of determination is the
principle that technological choice should turn in the direction
of technologies which liberate the many rather than facilitate
control of the few.4 Unfortunately the choice of
technology in the developing world is often in the hands of those
who would like it to be an instrument in the furtherance of their
own power - the power of the controlling élite. Unfortunately
also, there are many technologies, particularly in the
information area, which facilitate processes of social and
political control.

The bending of technology to service rather than oppression
necessitates a preliminary examination of the routes through
which a new technology finds its way into developing countries.
We shall therefore look at some ways in which the developing
world's participation in the decision-making process can be
strengthened.

Routes of Entry

A new technology finds its way into a developing country
either:

(1) by the country's own decision, uninfluenced by
external factors;

(2) under the pressure of external factors which for one
reason or another it is unable to resist; or

(3) through a combination of internal and external
factors.

It is the author's view, which needs to be empirically tested,
that the technologies introduced under head (2) are more numerous
and extensive than is commonly acknowledged and that they tend to
be the dominant technologies in nearly every developing country.

I will deal briefly with each of these in turn.

1. Internal Decisions Uninfluenced by External Factors

A developing country may take a decision to import a new
technology because its government

(a) genuinely believes that that technology is truly
essential to the well-being or development of the country;

(b) believes that there will be a political advantage to
it in importing such technology, e.g. that computerization of
the governmental process will give it greater control over
its citizens or that some extensive project, e.g. an
irrigation project, will gain it political mileage;

(c) is under pressure from internal vested interests to
import such technology. Such pressures may come from economic
interests it needs to cultivate for political reasons or from
powerful individuals who will develop a vested interest in
the new technology;

(d) has corrupt reasons, in the sense that individual
members of the government or their associates may see private
profit in it for themselves;

(e) sees advantages in the offer of a technology highly
attractive to the dominant classes in the target country,
though not directly of benefit to the masses. Such an
élitist class and its demands are often psychologically
linked to those of the consumer society of the West. s As
Marc Nerfin, the President of the International Foundation
for Development Alternatives, so cogently observed at a UNU
Workshop in Indonesia in 1986, 6 "there is a fracturing
into two of every society, much worse than the traditional
East-West and North-South rifts: the two Indias, the two
Chiles, the two USAs, the two worlds."

The list is not exhaustive. It becomes important to gather
information regarding the factors preceding the decisional
process. If there are circumstances pointing to the existence of
such factors as are listed in (b), (c) and (d) above, they need
analysis and exposure. This is not always easy, for we are here
on sensitive ground. It is better, however, that the reality be
recognized and be taken into consideration than that we should
continue paying obeisance to the myth that the problem disappears
when the decision is a purely autonomous one.

2. Pressure of External Factors

The government may be powerless to resist a new technology or
product for many reasons, e.g.:

(a) It may be tied to an aid package and must therefore be
taken along with it.

(b) It may be a technology sought to be introduced by a
multinational corporation which is so influential in the
country concerned that the government cannot afford to
displease it and has no option but to permit its
introduction.

(c) It may be associated with a military or economic
alliance or grouping and the country concerned is hence not
in a position to resist it.

(d) The country concerned may have adopted an open-door
economic policy and feels it may damage its image as a free
investment country by denying entry to a technology which is
heavily pushed by powerful overseas financial interests.

(e) The technology emanates from a country which is the
most powerful trading partner of the developing country
concerned. Any refusal to permit the importation the
technology could have severely damaging effects upon the
trading relationship, to the grave detriment of the country
concerned.

(f) The technology emerges from a country to which the
country concerned is heavily in debt. Similar factors operate
as in (e) above.

(g) The technology may be one associated with the arms
trade. The armaments industry, already in a relationship with
the country concerned, presses it and the country cannot
resist.

(h) Massive advertising campaigns launched with all the
powerful economic resources of the developed world may create
a captive market in the target country, which exercises
compelling pressures upon the government to permit admission
of the project.

(i) The technology concerned may be made available
apparently free of charge, but the strings attached are that
the providing country becomes the sole market for the
apparatus that needs to be purchased for implementing the
technology, e.g. television infrastructure or a
high-technology hospital.

3. Mixed Internal and External Factors

There could be a blend of one or more of the factors
enumerated above, in numerous permutations and combinations.

The decisional process prior to the creation or importation of
the new technology must take acount of all these possibilities,
each in its own way a very real factor finally resulting in the
entry of unsuitable or oppressive technologies. The factors
outlined above have serious implications not only in regard to
the prevention of harmful technology but also as inhibiting
factors preventing access to technology which could foster and
promote human rights, as well as free choice of such
technologies. Compulsion to choose a given technology in a
limited economic situation often means compulsion to forgo
another more beneficial or more desired technology.

Indeed, the matter does not end here, but these influences
continue after the introduction of the technology. It brings more
unsuitable technologies in its train as the original technology,
once entrenched, becomes too expensive to dislodge.

It is vital to the connection between technology and the right
to development that there be a clearer understanding of these
decisional processes and of the complex of factors that
contribute to them. This is an important area of analysis in any
study. It will be a useful research project to analyse in the
context of two or three countries the decisional routes of entry
into them of perhaps five selected technologies.

Such enhanced understanding is an important means of
introducing more real participation in the decision-making that
introduces technology into developing countries. Often these
factors convert an apparent freedom to decide into a situation of
non-freedom - a situation where the vast bulk of a developing
country's population has the decision thrust upon them that they
will receive an unsuitable or exploitative technology.

Such considerations lead logically to the need for the more
widespread diffusion of information in those communities,
regarding not only the alternative technologies available but
also the inhibiting decisional factors outlined above. This
involves an educational process which will produce results in the
long term, but in the short term it necessitates the setting up
of multidisciplinary committees charged with the task of
assessing the new technologies in the light of the country's
economic, social, and cultural needs. Purely scientific
committees are inadequate to cope with these decisions, as has
now been well accepted for several years.7 A greater
awareness of the technological alternatives is important to the
work of these groups.

In other words, there has to be a break from the deterministic
theory regarding technology which holds that technology runs an
inevitable course and that it cannot be resisted as it has a
motive force of its own.

Technology Surveillance

In scanning the means by which the developing world's
participation in decision-making can be strengthened, the concept
of technology assessment assumes great importance. Technology has
a way of taking over the control of areas to which it applies.
Once a sophisticated technology is introduced - be it in the
field of information, engineering or agriculture- it tends to
dictate its own requirements and make all else subservient to its
own needs. Often the very problem itself, which the technology
was intended to serve, becomes subordinate to the servicing of
the technology. The intended servant becomes the master.

It is necessary, especially in developing societies, to keep
constantly in view the principle that technology is there to
serve the people and not to be served by them. There should be
control over it at every point. This means among other things a
continual process of review by committees or groups, of which
citizens form an important element. The experts are no doubt
necessary, but there needs to be constant questioning as to
whether the technology is serving its purpose, creating new
problems or being in fact counter-productive from the standpoint
of the needs of any particular country.

A matter to be considered is whether in relation to developing
countries mechanisms ought not to be recommended which will
achieve this purpose.

Just as developing countries all too often exhibit an attitude
of resignation to the inevitability of technology, they also
entertain a feeling of futility in regard to any attempt to
control it. It is both too complex and too powerful to admit of
lay attempts at control. That attitude needs re-examination.8

It may well set trends in many developing countries if this
study broadly recommends an essential human rights policy related
to technology, suggesting that institutional structures for the
constant surveillance of technology be set up as a matter of
course. The habit of technology surveillance does not exist in
most developing societies and it must be stimulated to emerge.

The techniques of technology assessment, well developed and
entrenched in the affluent world, can afford useful guidelines.
We have here an ironic situation. New technologies are evolved
largely in the developed world and are hence suited for the
developed world. They are scrutinized in the developed world by
technological assessment committees. Yet before their
introduction to the developing world, for which they are far more
likely to be unsuitable, they are not scrutinized by comparable
boards or committees. Indeed, the need for such scrutiny in the
developing world is even greater, for another reason. The
developed world has already felt the impact of most of these
technologies and adjusted to it, while the developing world has
yet to feel the first impact of many of them. That impact must be
assessed before the technology is foisted on them, for it can
disrupt many factors essential to the stability of those
societies; one example might be a labour-saving technology such
as robotization for which that country is not yet ready.

A large segment of the industrial production in the third
world is directly or indirectly affected by new technologies - e.
g. microchips and the creation and use of new materials. Even
seemingly remote technologies such as organ transplants can
assume human rights dimensions in the developing world, as for
example when they generate a traffic in organ donation between
the rich and the poor worlds. Vigilance is required at all points
of possible contact between new technologies and the developing
world.

Often a correct choice cannot be made for lack of knowledge of
the new technologies on the part of local decision-makers. It is
essential therefore that decision-makers in third-world
situations be better informed of the entire concept of technology
assessment.

We cannot, of course, leave this topic without referring to
the Bhopal disaster and the surveillance systems resulting from
it. The chemical hazard control programme launched by India is a
very ambitious one. It includes identification, analysis, and
control of all industrial activities involving potentially
hazardous chemicals and processes. It also involves a census of
India's estimated 5,000 chemical production units and a wide
range of safety measures, including a greatly strengthened
factory inspectorate. Unless developing countries think in these
terms they are more than likely to be dumping grounds for
careless or untested technology, with consequent damage to human
rights.9 If, on the other hand, they are prepared to
think in these terms it will make possible a great enhancement of
the enjoyment of technology.

Early Recognition and Alert Systems

When a new technology is introduced there should be early
recognition and alert systems in regard to its impact. With this
end in view, workshops have already been organized such as the
International Workshop on Advanced Technology Alert Systems:
Towards Exchange of Experiences and Promotion of International
Cooperation in Technology Assessment, which was organized by the
German Foundation for International Development (DSE), in West
Berlin in December 1985. The deliberations of that committee
brought out the fact that the assessment of technology linked
with technology management and technology transfer policy is
indispensable. Professor Rohatgi from India, one of the
participants in this workshop, declared: "We feel this
application of formal and quantitative techniques of technology
forecasting assessment and alert systems could lead to a vastly
improved and comprehensive identification of opportunities and
emerging technologies for developing countries well in
advance."

Private corporations in India have recently begun to conduct
forecasting studies relevant to their own research and production
codes. The general use of such methods by administrators is,
however, still far away.

The Advanced Technology Alert System (ATAS) offered by the
United Nations Committee on Science and Technology for
Development is also making a substantial contribution to the
early recognition of possible applications of new technologies.
One of its earlier studies was on biotechnology and microchips.
However, the output is not as steady and continuous as is
necessary, considering the vast nature of the problem and the
numerous countries that need this expertise. Other international
organizations like ILO and UNIDO offer international monitoring
and warning systems, especially in the fields of
microelectronics, genetic engineering, biotechnology, and
materials. One of the objectives that can be pursued through the
current programme is a concentration upon the ways in which
knowledge of technology assessment can be diffused throughout the
developing world. It would indeed be true to say that the new
technologies can, before their full impact is sufficiently
realized, make a great dent in the cultural and social progress
of third-world countries unless thought is given in advance to
their impact upon the social systems concerned.

Pursuing these notions further, technology assessment prior
to the creation of the product can lead to the fashioning of
a product more suitable to the recipient's needs and social and
economic conditions. This is an important feature of the rights
of protection against the harmful effects of scientific and
technological developments. It is a vital part of the
informational process preceding the evolution of an appropriate
product. It is also an important way in which developing
societies can make a greater contribution to development
in the area of technology, as suggested in the General Assembly's
Resolution on the right to development.

International Exchanges of Technological Assessment

A network of information exchange between quality control and
standards bureaux of all countries needs to be established in a
co-operative spirit. This committee can perhaps contribute
substantially to the evolution of such a network by studying ways
and means for the collaboration and exchange of such information
and by making facilities available for the exchange of policing
and investigating services, information and rules.

The Dag Hammarskjöld Seminar for Alternative Development
strategies in the Southern African region, 1985, suggested a
regional weekly newsletter linked to local, district, and
national papers for the exchange of technological information
pertinent to the region. Such newsletters do not involve the
expense involved in full third-world circulation and need to be
considered. 10

Technical Co-operation among Developing Countries

In the midst of all these discussions we must not lose sight
of the fact that there are great technical resources within the
developing world itself. Much of this has evolved with special
reference to the needs of the developing world. It is true that
it comprises only a small percentage of the totality of global
scientific and technological resources, but it is nevertheless
significant enough for a concerted effort to be made to share
this around among the developing countries themselves. They can
do this with little expense to themselves, and the efforts that
have so far been made for technical co-operation amongst
developing countries (TCDC) need to be stepped up. TCDC is an
idea which has already produced considerable results. The problem
relates also to the question of information flow, which we shall
discuss later. There needs to be a network of communication among
scientists of the developing world, and it could well be that the
United Nations University can contribute to the global effort to
promote such an exchange of information as well as of personnel.

Development Digest already provides a valuable
information link for this purpose, and perhaps its linkage with
district and national papers can be explored.

Such a network of information is also evolving in the form of
ASSET (Abstracts of Selected Solar Energy Technology), and the
work that has been done in the ASSET field could well be
duplicated in other fields. Attention needs to be given to
linking together technologists and scientists in particular areas
of expertise from various developing countries.

Fields in which such exchanges of information and experience
are obviously required are solar energy, tropical health and
diseases, mining, health, agricultural procedures, low-cost
housing, and cottage industries, to mention but a few. All of
these are areas where technology can well be exchanged among
third-world countries. It would be helpful if the journals in
question also carried a list of experts in those fields, along
with their addresses.

The programme of action on the establishment of a new
international economic order states that "developing
countries are urged to promote and establish effective
instruments of co-operation in the fields of science and
technology, transport, shipping and mass communication
media." This can only be brought about if proper vehicles of
communication can be devised. One of the means towards this end
is that of an exchange of scientists and technologists; an
exchange fellowship scheme needs perhaps to be considered in this
context.

It is worth recalling that it was as long ago as December 1972
that the UN General Assembly passed a Resolution which authorized
UNDP to convene a special working group to examine ways for
developing countries "to share their capacities and
experiences with one another with a view to increasing and
improving development assistance"; one of the several
factors which were identified as tending to inhibit technical
co-operation among developing countries was the lack of
communication and information systems in relation to the
capacities and requirements of developing countries. There has
been insufficient progress along this route in the decade and a
half that has elapsed since then. There was much discussion at
the time regarding an "attitudinal barrier" which
favoured the use of experts, consultant firms, and equipment from
developed countries. Efforts must be made to overcome that
attitudinal barrier.

With more participation by developing countries they will have
a greater ability to resist deterministic beliefs about the
inevitability of technological change. As an Australian study
advocated for Australia, itself often a receiver of technology,
"Technological change is not inevitable and predetermined.
We must resist deterministic talk about inexorable change. . .
There is and must be choice. We can, and must, influence choices
made in technological decision-making."11

CONTRIBUTION

We have dealt thus far with participation in decision-making
about the introduction of new technology. If developing-world
scientists and decision-makers are involved at the stage of
evolution of a new technology, there can be an even more
substantial attempt to turn technology to the service of
development.

As a writer on the subject has observed:12

Techniques do not exist in heaven, in Platonic caves or in
entrepreneurs' imagination, ready to be plucked from the air and
incorporated into use. Techniques, whether they be methods of
administration or machines to produce consumer goods, have to be
invented, developed, introduced, modified, etc. The development
of techniques is essentially a historical process in which one
technique with one set of characteristics replaces another in the
light of the historical and economic circumstances of the time.
The historical nature of technological development means that the
time and circumstances in which any particular technique is
developed heavily influence its characteristics.

At the same time we must be conscious of practical restraints,
such as that a multinational can rely on expertise from all over
the world to develop a project, while a local operator, who comes
to the project for the first time, will have to make all the
mistakes the multinational has already made and still not possess
a fraction of the latter's experience. 13

We shall look at some facets of these problems.

Participation in Product Designing

The needs of the country concerned, together with the dangers
and the advantages, should wherever possible be part of the input
into the designing of the technology. This avoids the
unsatisfactory situation of the developing country being
presented with a completed technology or technological product
which it must either accept or reject. Every country has its own
requirements and is entitled to products tailored to those
requirements. This may not always be feasible but in many cases
where it is in fact feasible the unsuitable product tends to be
designed without adequate participation from the recipient
country.

An important guideline for the export of technology should be
that where a particular developing-world market is sought,
representatives from the recipient country should wherever
possible be brought into the designing stage prior to the final
completion of the product. It is true that the forces of the
market-place sometimes bring about that result, but the
formulation of such guidelines will assist in making this a
routine procedure wherever possible.

Joint Venture Enterprises

Where a technology is involved which is too sophisticated for
the developing country to produce by itself, joint venture
enterprises would be essential. The developing world would have a
substantial share in these and hence be able to contribute its
own expertise to the process of production.

Research in international trade law aimed at giving more
strength to the local component of joint venture enterprises can
establish more ways in which that local component can assert
itself. At present the foreign participant often enjoys dominance
by virtue of being the owner of the technology.

Research would need to cover the basic transfer modes of
technology, such as licensing or franchising, subcontracting, and
supply of equipment, materials, or technology. Much technology
comes in the form of total package transfer, including such
matters as market survey, product mix, design, production plan,
quality control, and manufacturing processes and procedures. Also
involved are the foreign exchange component and managing and
marketing skills.14 Selected aspects of this package
can be scrutinized with a view to increasing the local input.
Indeed, there should be the capability of untying the whole
package in order to scrutinize its different component elements
with a view to maximizing the local input in consonance with
local needs. Tied packages of conditions which must be taken or
rejected as a whole often enable very exploitative conditions to
be foisted upon recipients. There is an important field of work
here for the lawyers and international consultants in the
developing world. Currently the legal expertise available in most
parts of the developing world cannot match the expertise that can
be commanded by the joint venture partners of the developed
world. Perhaps the United Nations University or the Human Rights
Commission could assist in this respect by organizing seminars or
training courses for developing world lawyers and administrators
in this field.

Where there is a process of subcontracting, the relationship
between the large or parent enterprise and the subcontractor
needs to move away from the "parent-child" type of
relationship to one of equal partnership. Local legislation can
provide additional strengths to the local partner, making the
bargaining relationship closer to one of equality.

Where the transfer is through a supply of equipment, material,
and basic technology there will be considerable room for
adaptation to local needs. This will also generate technological
skills in the recipient countries.

In every one of these types of operation the importance of the
generation of local skills cannot be overemphasized.

An important area of legal research involved in all of these
types of technology transfer is in the area of restrictive trade
practices. Inherent in many of them are restrictions which
severely inhibit local input and the spread of local expertise.
For the socio-economic development of a nation the latter is
particularly important and cannot be left to the chance forces of
the market-place. It requires deliberate policy measures by the
government of the recipient country. Indeed, government agencies,
such as the Council of Science and Industrial Research set up by
the Government of India, or Institutes of Small-scale Industries
or National Science Development Boards, can help in co-ordination
and in giving advice on some of the technical aspects involved in
such policies. Non-governmental organizations, such as trade
associations and industrial co-operatives, can also provide these
services. 15

The process of technology transfer to developing countries
often comes up against a problem sometimes described as "the
double economic structure." By this is meant the fact that
in many of these countries there is, in and around the large
cities, a prosperous and sophisticated consumer group, often with
Western-oriented tastes, while in the other areas there is a
large population with different background and tastes. Both are
potential groups of customers. To which groups does one cater?16

There are heavy human rights overtones in the decision to be
made. The chances are that the economically and often politically
more powerful urban group would be the target of the introduced
technology. The decision-makers invariably come from this group.
Their needs tend to be supplied while the needs of the rest,
however urgent, pass unheeded. Sophisticated cookers for the
urban élite would for example gain priority over the development
of a simple solar cooker for the rural population. Instances
could be multiplied.

Governments need to develop scales of priorities based on
human rights, of which the most relevant for our purpose are the
rights to food, health, shelter, and a decent standard of living.
These must take priority over the sophisticated technologies
demanded by the élite. The competing claims to technology of
these two groups are often lost sight of when technology is
received or accepted by developing countries. It is important
that the human rights aspect be given a higher profile, so that
decision-makers in receiving technology will bear in mind this
dichotomy of demands within the same system.

The Computer as the Generator of New Products

To all this must be added the fact that the actual processing
of information, as well as the dissemination of information - not
to speak of the storing of information requires intensive
investment in computerization. These again are largely within the
control of one sector of the world's economy and it is that
sector which thus acquires increasing control over the product
and the information embodied within it.

The computer is no longer merely an assembler of information.
It is today extensively used to generate new products and tailor
them for particular purposes and specific markets. This resource,
extremely expensive and beyond the reach of most developing
societies, gives the developed world an irreversible lead in the
ability to design a product for the markets of the developing
world, so that there can in fact be little real competition.

The future will see the further spread of new computer
techniques, including that of robot technology, which can have
severe repercussions, Such technology could thus in effect
deprive a developing economy of the use of its labour, which is
one of its most important economic resources. Important policy
decisions are called for in this area, in order to increase the
ability of developing countries to make an input at the designing
stage into the new technology.

Education for Participation

A steady policy aim of generating increasing technological
skills in the local population is an important part of any policy
aimed at turning technology to the service of human rights.
Scientists and technologists from the country itself are likely
to be far more aware of pressing local needs and demands than
those from abroad. With more such skills available locally there
will also be a greater trend towards discrimination in the
acceptance of technology and towards taking apart a complex
technological package rather than accepting it in its totality
without question.

An attitudinal change is required here in the entire
educational structure- a change that will accept technology not
as a foreign graft but as an integral part of the local culture.
Marrying traditional local technology to the new will have
important psychological overtones for this process. The dichotomy
between the traditional way and the technological way, which
leads to the us/them syndrome regarding technology in developing
countries, needs to be broken down. We are one world, and
technology is the common inheritance of this one world, without
which no part of it can survive. Just as Japanese culture
integrated Western technology into its way of life to the extent
that there is now nothing "foreign" about it, so also
all developing countries must integrate technology.

The educational process must aim not merely at producing
scientists and technologists who can actively participate. It
must aim also at the general population, with the intention of
making them more receptive to the technologies that will assist
them.

Reaching the Grass Roots

Any process of educating the community must take note of the
current deficiencies in the technological communications network.

Even within the UN system, despite its enormous output of
publications, there is an insufficient targeting of
"grass-roots" audiences. For example, a recent survey
found that of WHO's list of approximately 1,300 titles, only 11
titles were suitable for primary health workers.17
Although there were 1,800 publications (including periodicals)
issued within the UN system in 1981, the average print run was
only 2,000 copies per publication, despite the fact that the
seemingly large number of 3.6 million volumes and journals was
thus produced.18 this limited output around 80 per
cent went to the industrialized countries. For WHO the figure was
80 per cent, for ILO 78 per cent and for the UN itself 91 per
cent.

Such figures underline the necessity for new concepts and
methods relating to publishing for the grass roots. It is to be
remembered that publication is not the only route by which the
grass roots can be reached. Other alternatives that have been
satisfactorily employed are:

1. Demonstrations. This is especially useful with
small-scale technology. Nothing succeeds like demonstration
of a good example.

2. Prototypes. It is useful to start a prototype of
a new scheme at the grass roots and monitor its progress.
Material can then be put out showing how the prototype can be
replicated, drawing on the experiences in that very
community.

3. Promotion of the idea and of adaptations. This
is a process that must be actively undertaken with literature
at the grass-roots level.

Academic publications, while they have their own merits, are
no substitute for revitalized attempts to take technology to the
grass roots.

Appropriate Technology

This is a topic that has generated a vast literature and there
is no space here to give it the attention it deserves.
Schumacher's Small is Beautiful is perhaps still the outstanding
work in this genre, which has now grown to thousands of titles
and a flood of articles, reports, and symposia. Since appropriate
technology aims at adaptation of technology to the needs of the
recipient country, the local input into the actual technology is
considerable. This has the additional advantage of preventing a
sense of alienation. Mahatma Gandhi's approach was not against
machines but against man becoming mechanized. With appropriate
technology, which is adapted to the service of the receiving
community, there is little chance of man becoming the servant of
the technology.

Appropriate technology does not necessarily mean that it
should be entirely the adaptation of the receiving country. Some
developed countries have active programmes for contribution
towards the evolution of appropriate technology, as for example
the German Appropriate Technology Exchange (GATE) under which
various German agencies joined in developing a service package
for developing countries. It concerns itself with the planning
and implementation of technical co-operation projects dealing
with the development, adaptation, transfer, and propagation of
appropriate technologies. Developed countries can assist
considerably in this way.

Schumacher's vision of a new method of production, rooted in
what he calls Buddhist economics, which should be simple,
non-violent, kind to the environment and not aimed at the
stimulation and satisfaction of superfluous material needs, has
many ideas within itself which can assist in turning technology
to the furtherance of human rights.

In the midst of all this discussion we must not lose sight of
the fact that education is a major lever for development. There
must therefore be a plan to spread among each community an
understanding of the way in which technology can be of assistance
to it in its day-to-day problems. It is true there are already
rather loose organizations aimed at spreading this sort of
knowledge among the populations of third-world countries. There
needs to be some co-ordinated effort, the guidelines for which
may perhaps be formulated by the Human Rights Commission,
pointing to the way in which each government could maximize the
communication system in relation to technology that is
appropriate for its local communities.

ENJOYMENT

The purpose of all the decisional and participatory processes
thus far considered is of course the enjoyment of the technology
by the maximum number of citizens of the country concerned. While
the technology benefits society generally it must also be capable
of individual enjoyment. It must not in other words be a
technology which only the privileged can enjoy.

In deciding which of various sectors of a country's population
should have priority in a given area of technology, perhaps a
computation on the lines of a Benthamite calculus of utility
could be employed. The technology must be capable of enjoyment by
the largest possible sector of the population.

This is perhaps the most important of the trilogy of
requisites within the General Assembly's definition, and we need
to examine the serious obstructions impeding the movement of
science and technology from the point of its creation to the
point of its delivery to the individual member of society who is
to enjoy it.

In this section I propose to examine some of these major
obstacles. They include current attitudes of the scientific
establishment, the tendency of the information technology to
concentrate and entrench the technological dominance of the
Western world, the armaments trade, the politics of food, and the
inadequacies of the law in keeping pace with technology. The list
is by no means exhaustive and I have selected only a few major
areas. I shall consider each of these in turn.

It will be noted that some of them have relevance also to the
earlier topics of participation and contribution.

Attitudes of the Scientific EstablishmentScientific Priorities

If we are to turn technology to affirmative service in the
cause of human rights, we cannot even hope to achieve this result
unless we can enlist the co-operation of the scientific
establishment. Indeed, if we can, half the battle is won.

The Brandt Report, which stated that, while more than 50 per
cent of the world's scientific manpower was devoted to the
manufacture of weapons, less than I per cent was devoted to
researching the needs of the developing world, makes imperative
the diffusion of such knowledge. One begins to wonder whether
there is not a responsibility lying on the appropriate
international bodies to suggest some scale of priorities in
relation to technological research. It is true there can be no
enforcing mechanism in relation to priorities, but guidelines in
this area would be of great value.

A disproportionate amount of resources is sometimes devoted to
an area of research which benefits extremely few and may not
contribute at all to a vast segment of the human race. Elaborate
and expensive procedures for organ transplants or in vitro ferilization
may prolong individual human life or result in the possibility of
the creation of life in laboratory conditions. Such technology
benefits the few and involves immense resources, thus leading us
to the vital question of priorities in a world of shortages.

We need to work towards securing an acknowledgement from
prestigious scientific organizations of the need to step up the
amount of scientific endeavour spent on researching the technical
needs of the developing world.

The universal eradication of malaria could be achieved at a
cost far less than the rate of expenditure for one hour on the
global armaments race. Common sense would dictate which one of
these is the priority, but we tend to continue pouring money into
the technological processes dictated by the needs of corporate,
industrial, and military might.

Social Responsibilities of Scientists

Unfortunately there has not been a sufficiently sustained
effort to bring home to scientists the human rights implications
of their work. Scientists as individuals are as well intentioned
as any other members of society, but their work has immense
potential for the destruction of human rights. 19 All too often,
however, the scientist, engrossed in his own particular research,
does not see the social consequence of his work.

It is vital that a heightened consciousness of these social
implications be fostered in scientists. This may be done through
social responsibility courses introduced into all tertiary
science curricula, where today they are singularly lacking, or by
the introduction of ethical codes which different disciplines of
scientists, e.g. engineers, would adopt. It could also be
achieved through a wider diffusion of relevant information among
scientists of the social consequences of their work, which
international organizations such as UNEP (the United Nations
Environmental Project), Unesco, or UNDP could stimulate. Indeed,
there is room here for an international journal on the Current
Social Consequences of Science, which one such organization, or
even UNU, could undertake.

Consideration of this matter leads in turn to consideration of
the responsibilities of the scientific community, who, after all,
are in the vanguard of this process of diverting earth resources
and human resources into wasteful expenditure. Scientists and
technologists tend to give their expertise to the highest bidder.
There can be no quarrel with this, but when the overall result is
one which produces a degree of iniquity as great as that embodied
in the 50 versus I per cent differential referred to in the
Brandt Report, one begins to wonder whether the scientific
community ought not to be devoting some effort to evolving a code
of social responsibilities.

This is a much neglected area: except for the very rudimentary
code of medical ethics centring around the Hippocratic oath, and
some extremely rudimentary codes of the engineering profession or
in the computer held, the vast profession of science is
completely unregulated by ethical codes such as exist among
lawyers and accountants. Consequently many of the world's most
talented scientists devote their expert talent and skill to
perfecting weapons of destruction, with no apparent qualms
resulting from the perception that a fraction of their talents
directed into different channels could save tens of thousands
from starvation or malnutrition. In short, the scientific
conscience needs to be stimulated.

The attention of future scientists should be particularly
drawn to the imbalance in scientific effort already mentioned.
They need to be shown how this may result in tensions so severe
as to create dangers to world peace in the future. With the
virtual monopoly of expensive scientific technology currently
enjoyed by one sector of the world economy, the imbalance in the
relative economic positions of the different sectors of the world
is heightened to acute proportions, and may result by the turn of
the century in the bitterest conflicts, conflicts that will
unsettle the rich and poor world alike.

We should perhaps be considering also the inauguration of
centres where international co-operation between scientists can
be generated by drawing together scientists from different
sections of the world for a discussion of these socially oriented
problems.

The Perversion of Science and Technology

Reference should here be made to the well-known Poona
Declaration on Scientific Responsibility, which describes itself
as an indictment of the perversion of science and technology, and
spells out in quite explicit terms some of the problems which
this project would encounter. Among the items mentioned in the
Poona Declaration, which was adopted by the participants at the
fourteenth meeting of the World Order Models Project held in
Poona, India, in July 1978, were those related to biological
farming in the third world by pharmaceutical transnationals, the
banishment of a growing number of first-world poor from
productive activity through increasingly capital-intensive
technology, and the employment of 50 per cent of all research
scientists in the world in military research and development. The
resolution urged serious reflection and a vigorous debate on the
present predicament and on the need for an active search for
alternative perspectives on science and technology, relating both
to the pursuit of truth and the process of human liberation.

The Promotion of Humanistic Science

The development of a more humanistic approach to science and
technology could be stimulated through the establishment of
centres for the study of the human aspects of science and
technology or centres for humanistic science. This is a needed
corrective to the compartmentalization of science, which in this
generation has seen scientific expertise fragmenting into ever
smaller specialties and subspecialties. The deeper one goes into
a narrow area of science, the narrower becomes one's outlook, and
the less one communicates with other disciplines or even with the
subdisciplines within one's scientific field. The perspectives
that ought constantly to be before the scientist hence tend to be
shut out. The remedy for this is to see science in an overall or
holistic context. Apart from the injection of social perspectives
into existing science curricula, there is a need for the
establishment of centres devoted to this holistic approach.

Such a holistic approach would necessarily involve
interdisciplinary studies and would bring together sociology,
economics, the humanities, philosophy, jurisprudence, and many
other areas of human knowledge that can make a direct
contribution to fostering in scientists and in the scientific
product a greater regard for humanity and the environment, which
in the last resort scientists and science are intended to serve.
Many of the problems concerning the impact of science on society
and in particular on third-world societies are the result of
failure to have this broader dimension prominently placed before
the scientific enterprise.

A prototype for such an enterprise could well be the
Mitsubishi Kasei Institute of Humanistic Science, a large
research centre based upon this holistic and humanistic approach
to science.

The informational aspects that go into the creation of new
products need this orientation, and it is most important that
these perspectives be fed III prior to the generation of the
product - hence the importance of the humanistic approach at an
early stage, before the technology is actually created The impact
of such a new attitude will be felt also in the field of
scientific method, where results are currently determined by
experiments tightly controlled within their own narrow framework,
without regard to the broader social dimension. Results that fit
in with the postulates of that narrow frame of reference are not
results that will necessarily sit easily within the postulates of
a broader social frame. The framework of scientific research
must, in other words, be considerably broadened to take on a
humanistic dimension.

Information Technology

A second great roadblock on the way to the bending of science
and technology to greater human service is the way in which
information technology is helping in the polarization of
developed and developing worlds. Although one would expect that
the explosive growth of information technologies in recent years
would turn out to the benefit of the average citizen in the
developing world by making a knowledge of science and technology
more freely available in quarters that it would not otherwise
have reached, the information revolution has thrown up yet
another obstacle to the delivery of appropriate technology to the
third world.

It is to be remembered also that whereas earlier technology,
dating back to steam and electricity, greatly magnified physical
power, modern information technology greatly enhances man's
intellectual power,20 therefore greatly magnifies its
possessor's powers of domination.

The Information Component of New Technology

It will be observed that the generation of information that is
the prelude to the creation of a new scientific product often
takes place through the availability of resources in the
developed world, resources that few developing countries possess.
These resources consist of trained researchers as well as an
expensive apparatus for the collection of data. Although the
collection of this raw data has to be undertaken in distant
places, it is often processed in the rich world at centres far
away from the sites where the information is collected. This is
the first stage in the surrender of control by the developing
world of knowledge concerning itself that could assist in the
creation of a future product for use in its own territory.

Much of this information bears upon the increasingly
recognized principle that international agencies are striving to
protect under the head of transborder data flow. If knowledge is
power, knowledge of local conditions, needs, strengths, and
shortcomings is power over the society in question. Such data,
once it travels beyond the boundaries of the country where it is
collected, ceases to be under its control. The first stage in the
fashioning or introduction of a new technology is thus placed
beyond the control of the recipient country. It is vital that
this question be addressed, bearing in mind also the proposition
that knowledge is free and that research should be unfettered.
There is here an important dilemma to which we should address
ourselves.

The scarcity in the developing world of the two resources
earlier mentioned, namely the human resource of the skilled
researcher and the information-gathering apparatus, is one of the
root problems creating this dilemma. It is possible that it could
be addressed by devising an appropriate combination of resources
from the two countries mentioned - the giver and the recipient of
the technology - rather than there being a total surrender of
control at this early stage to the giver. In other words, is it
not possible to introduce a mandatory requirement of
participation in the project, with property in the resulting
information being shared between the two countries?

Even before the manufacture of the product resulting from the
information thus generated, it thus already embodies property (in
the form of raw or processed information) that belongs to the
developed world, although its eventual target is the developing
world. When the technological input takes place, the totality of
the product becomes the property of the developed world and under
current concepts of property and free trade it can do with it
what it pleases and sell it on terms it alone determines. However
much it might be needed in the developing country, barriers then
arise between the product and the place in which it is to be
used.

These barriers take the form of protection of intellectual
property, protection of financial investments in the generation
of the new product, and political barriers which need to be
penetrated before the product can really serve the people for
whom it is intended. These political barriers take the important
form of levers of social, political, and economic control which
are manipulated almost exclusively from the developed world.

Various aspects of human rights become relevant to a
consideration of the resulting problems.

Clashes of Human Rights Principles

On the one hand there is a recognized right of the creator to
a product, whether material or intellectual, and to the profits
flowing therefrom. On the other hand there is a general principle
that science and technology are primarily intended for the use of
humanity and that information is free. Other clashes of human
rights principles occur when we consider that the right of
property is heavily protected under the Western jurisprudential
tradition, while in the traditions of the developing world
considerations of social interest and of humanity occupy a higher
position in the hierarchy of values. The limitations that must be
placed in the social interest upon the absoluteness of ownership
principles tend therefore to be blunted where the dominance of
Western technology gives dominance to the Western position.

These conflicts are not easy to resolve, but there are some
trends in human rights jurisprudence that can be called on. One
of these is the growing emphasis upon the concept of
universalization of human rights norms. Concepts of absolute
rights of property that belong to an exclusively Western
jurisprudential tradition find it increasingly difficult to
maintain their regime unimpaired when confronted universally by
rival human rights traditions that do not accord this sacrosanct
importance to the concept of property.

Another is the increasing importance of social, economic, and
cultural rights, as compared with the civil and political rights
which formed the kernel of the Western human rights tradition.
All of these result in the progressive attrition of property
rights in the interests of social welfare.

The matter can be illustrated by a contemporary example. It
has been advertised recently that a medical product which
prolongs the life of an AIDS sufferer will shortly be on the
market at a cost of approximately $20,000 a year for each user.
We do not know how authentic this claim is but it offers a
textbook illustration. Such treatment may well be beyond the
financial reach of a person who desperately needs this drug. We
can think in a similar context of a hypothetical cancer cure
which is marketed at $1,000 a pill.

Such examples highlight the clash between two human rights -
the property right of a creator in his intellectual creation and
the right to life and health of the user. Each is valued in its
own context but when posed in opposition to each other there is
an inevitable subordination of the right which has less muscle
behind it.

Such examples, though far-fetched, draw attention to the
dilemma that constantly faces the international community in
relation to expensive technologies which the developing world
needs desperately but which can only be obtained at a price
beyond their reach. While we must have due regard for the
expense, risk, and expenditure of human resources involved in the
generation of the product, it is not unreasonable to argue that
the product once achieved belongs to all humanity, subject to a
reasonable compensation to the generator of the product for the
effort and expense involved.

Scales of Priorities of Human Rights

The clash of principles outlined above points to the need for
international guidelines to be evolved and brought into play so
as to achieve a workable reconciliation between conflicting
principles.

For example, it may be possible to define a set of guidelines
under which products that are vital to life, once generated,
become universal property, subject to a right of compensation at
a level deemed appropriate by an international authority set up
for this purpose. Perhaps the analogy of non-derogable rights
which we can draw from the learning regarding derogation from
human rights principles21 could afford some guidelines
as to human rights which are considered of such a compelling
nature that they override others in the event of a clash. The
funds for such compensation payments may not be available for
those who need the product and it may be necessary to build up a
buffer fund which can in such instances make the producer a fair
reward for his initiative, effort, and expenditure.

This is not to say that every product thus generated will
become the subject of such free transfer. The principles outlined
above will apply in exceptional instances, such as are defined by
the appropriate authority, and the justification for this would
be that the rights to health and life stand above all other
rights.

The writer is conscious of course that such a principle can
operate as an inhibitor of research. It may well be that research
organizations, particularly drug companies, would not invest the
current level of effort in potential products, if they knew there
was a possibility of the appropriation of the resulting knowledge
into the universal domain. On the other hand, it is only in
exceptional cases that the principles outlined would be brought
into operation, and in any event there would be a reasonable
costing of the effort and expense involved, so that loss would be
averted and there would be a reasonable profit for the outlay.

Another consideration to be borne in mind is that the profits
currently made through such technologies are well in advance of
what may be described as reasonable remuneration. Pharmaceutical
companies are well known for the very substantial profits they
make, far exceeding what is considered, even in the competitive
financial world, a reasonable remuneration for the outlay of
resources. It may well be that similar principles apply in regard
to new technologies that generate agricultural products.

The collection and processing of information, which, as we
observe in this section, are an essential prelude to the creation
of a product, thus involve not merely the collection and
classification of facts but also an analysis and evaluation of
any clash of principles involved. Seeing that the informational
input prior to the creation of the product will be of increasing
importance as the basis of scientific and technological
development for the foreseeable future, the problem we are
confronted with will, if at all, become more acute. We need to
address it now.

The Role of the State

It is clear that the state has an important role to play in
achieving the maximum enjoyment of technology by its citizens.
One of the most important problems faced by developing countries
is the nature and extent of this state role.

It would be of assistance to examine in this connection a
pioneering Sri Lankan project, the Million Houses Programme
(MHP). This programme offers both an interesting philosophical
base and a practical example in fulfilling the basic human right
to shelter of a large segment of the population. At the
thirty-fifth General Assembly of the UN in 1980, Sri Lanka
proposed the concept of a selected year to focus on shelter,
which resulted in the UN's International Year of Shelter for the
Homeless, 1987. The rationale behind the proposal, as stated by
Prime Minister Premadasa to the UN (12 October 1987) was that
great industrial and agricultural visions tended to by-pass the
centre of human development - the home.

The programme, which has already achieved the construction of
half a million houses, rests upon a support-based paradigm (S-BP)
rather than the traditional provider-based paradigm (P-BP). This
means that it is poor families and poor communities that both
decide and do, the role of the government being to support and
complement their initiatives. Under this philosophy all
technology issues are individually and locally determined by the
micro-context rather than determined from above in conformity
with a macro-scheme. In making known the technologies available,
the government has an important role to play, as it has in
providing credit, basic services, training, and technological
assistance. Housing options and loan packages (HOLPs) facilitate
choice of technology and materials. Yet the underlying philosophy
is that the state participates in the people's process rather
than the people in the process of the state. State support is
maximal; its intervention is minimal. Technology choices are for
the people and individuals of the area. Their range of
information is considerably magnified by the services provided by
the state.

We refer later in this chapter to the importance of self-help.
It may well be that there are principles of global significance
in this regard in the Sri Lankan experience.

One-way Information Flow

Another area of marked imbalance in the current world order is
the imbalance between the resources of the developing and the
developed worlds in relation to news flow. This may not at first
sight be seen as a means of perpetuating technology
differentials, but it is, in fact, especially when one considers
that the entire global communications network, as currently
organized, presents a largely one-sided information flow.

Raw information may come in from the developing to the
developed world but the processed information travels out in a
one-way stream of traffic from the developed to the developing
world, while nothing that can match it flows in the reverse
direction. In order to improve the human rights of the vast
sectors of the world population thus disadvantaged, it is
necessary that telecommunication facilities and wire services be
available to the developing countries, with a sufficient global
spread to relay from them processed news information to all
sectors of the globe. The lack of availability of such a system
means that the human rights of this vast group are impaired, for
the entire world receives its news and forms its views on the
basis of the one-way flow of information generated in the
developed world. This is in regard not merely to information
which we call "news," but to all species of
information, on the basis of which needs are perceived, policies
are made and products are designed. In the result the problems of
the developing world are not seen by the world public in the real
way in which they should be seen, that is in their overall
context, and the assessment in the developed world of a
third-world problem or need tends often to be distorted, not for
lack of goodwill but for lack of information.

This means that in the resulting political process or in the
resulting economic transactions, the legitimate human rights of
such developing-world populations tend to be negated or whittled
down to an extent not permissible under current universal
perceptions of human rights. Unesco at one stage considered in
detail this imbalance of news.

We need also to consider the imbalance of technologically
related information. The impact of technology on development and
developing societies cannot be considered adequately without due
reference to this aspect, which forms an important segment of the
area of research that this project should cover.

The Armaments Trade

Another dimension of the problem under review is the
interconnection between disarmament and development. Although the
intertwining of disarmament and global development is well
acknowledged in theory, very little has been done in practice to
achieve the desired result of diverting some portion of world
resources currently wasted on armaments into the field of
development. This is an area involving superpower and regional
politics, but also one to which the Human Rights Commission may
have some worthwhile contribution to make. Indeed, the Commission
would perhaps fail in its duty to consider the overall picture if
it did not give some attention to this vital aspect of the
development dialogue.

There have been insufficient analytical studies of the ways in
which the arms trade conflicts with nearly every canon of the
current universally accepted body of human rights. This can be
written on in extenso, but it is not within the scope of
the present study.

However, an important area of the arms trade which needs
continuing in-depth research is the question of diverting the
productivity of the armaments industry into products of a
peaceful nature. Conversion of swords into ploughshares is
perhaps the most important and urgent of the studies that need to
be undertaken. Considerations of space prevent a more detailed
study of this area, which is rapidly becoming a major area of
research.

The Politics of Food

A major obstacle to the enjoyment of modern technology by a
vast segment of the world's population in a vital arena is the
fact that food has become the plaything of a
political-economic-technological complex that works its equations
of profit ratios far from the starvation and malnutrition
produced by the maldistribution of food. These human problems are
seen almost as an academic exercise, far from the scene of the
problems themselves. All the resources of computer technology and
satellite scanning are used to manipulate the futures market in
grain, and the ledgers recording these transactions show only the
number of dollars gained rather than the number of human lives
lost.

Thus, although through the aid of technology world cereal
production has steadily outstripped world population growth, and
although the world produces more food per head of population than
ever before in human history (in 1985 it produced nearly 500
kilograms per head of cereals and root crops),22 more
than 730 million people did not amidst this plenty eat enough to
lead fully productive lives. 23

This increase in food production is of course the result of
improved technology, some of it of the most sophisticated kind.
Satellite imagery, microelectronics, computer sciences,
biotechnology, tissue culture techniques, and other frontier
technologies help produce this result. These technologies are,
however, under the control of the affluent world. Its grain
traders can put together a forecast of the world's crops by using
satellite infra-red scanning procedures for forecasting a bad
wheat crop - e.g. in the Soviet Union - thus assisting in the
manipulation of futures markets. Its politicians can use the
supply or withholding of grain as political weapons and can
decide when its farm production of surplus grain is to be
curtailed or stocks are to be destroyed to bolster up prices. Its
industrial-technological complex can offer or withhold a new
grain production technology to a third-world government or ruling
élite.

In the decisions that are taken the interests served are of
course not those of the bulk of the world's population but the
financial and political interests of the owners of the
technology. Else we would not see, for example, vast stocks of
food being burned or cattle being slaughtered. Nor would we see
massive cutbacks in agricultural production made mandatory by law
in great grain-producing countries such as the US or Australia.

The fact that food production and technology go hand in hand
in the 1980s points to the need for food technology to be
harnessed in the service of that greatest of human rights - the
right to life. Food adequate to the maintenance of a life of
dignity is a human right, and technology needs to be harnessed in
the cause of food security.

All of the technologies we have mentioned and many more must
be tapped to meet the needs of the developing world, but the
obstacles caused by commercial attitudes of profit-making,
scientific and technological lack of concern, and feelings of
futility and resignation on the part of third-world leaders and
scientists must be overcome.

The solution lies clearly not in the handing out of food
bonanzas to the developing world on a regular basis, but in their
greater participation in such technology. To this end we need
revised attitudes of the ruling elites, greater scientific and
social awareness, and international norms which regard food as a
public resource rather than a purely private right.

The following areas are suggested as needing increased
attention:

1. The development of norms of national and international
law in the field of intellectual property, seeking to build
up within the universal domain a pool of scientific and
technological knowledge. By way of example, private companies
seeking property rights to improved seed varieties tend often
to fail to recognize the rights of the countries from which
the plant matter was obtained. As the World Commission on
Environment and Development pointed out (p. 139), such
practices could discourage countries rich in genetic
resources from making these internationally available, thus
reducing the options for seed development in all countries.
Norms of international cooperation can also be built up in
these areas, just as such norms have been built up in the
field of environmental law.

2. International organizations such as FAO already hold an
unrivalled bank of agricultural statistics and inventories of
the world's physical resources. Such organizations can draw
in the most sophisticated modern technology to help the third
world. An outstanding example is FAO's satellite-based alert
system, backed by scientific establishments in the Federal
Republic of Germany, used to give early warning of drought,
crop failures, and insect plagues in Africa, thus enabling
preparation for major food shortages before they occur.24
Databases are being built up covering agro-climatological
statistics, day-to-day vegetation indexes, and an analysis of
potential locust habitats in Africa, the Middle East and
South-West Asia.

3. Within the developing countries there must be a greater
readiness to set up and finance research institutions that
can help in channelling the new technologies towards the
needs of the country in question. Many third-world countries,
knowing their weakness in research, tend to take this
situation for granted. This further increases the
technological gap with the world instead of providing the
technological bridge we need.

4. More specific international guidelines and national
laws are required for regulating food technology that is
introduced into a developing country.

5. International lending institutions such as the World
Bank and the Asian Development Bank can lay down firmer
guidelines requiring the development of local technological
skills in relation to agriculture and fisheries.

6. The world community, through its resources and
encouragement, must seek to divert towards food technology an
increasing segment of the world's scientific skill, of which,
according to the Brandt Report, less than I per cent is
devoted to the needs of the developing world. The vast bulk
of scientific research on agriculture still concentrates on
the needs of the developed world, whose resource-rich
conditions and ample water supplies contrast with areas such
as sub-Saharan Africa and the remoter areas of Asia and Latin
America with unreliable rainfall and poorer soils. These call
for new and specialized technologies suited to each
particular area, which would represent a combination of the
modern and the traditional.

7. The food problem is linked with the land problem and
research is required to free the maximum amount of land for
food production. Land law reforms would often have to be
effected to meet this need. The necessary studies would
include the disciplines of law and economics, having regard
in particular to the fact that much of the most serviceable
food-producing land in the developing world grows produce for
the developed world rather than food for its own population.

8. Freeing more land for food production involves
environmental concerns as well, such as rehabilitation of
mined-out land. Many new technologies are available for this,
and they need to be harnessed, while, at the same time, the
principles of environmental law need to be developed.

9. Human resources need development through educational
processes, leading to a greater receptivity to modern
technology - e.g. hydroponic cultivation, biomass generation
of energy, use of wind power for irrigation, solar energy for
such simple purposes as cooking, compost production in place
of imported fertilizers, crystal distribution techniques for
enhancing the water-retention capabilities of soil. Many of
these technologies, often thought of as remote and
sophisticated, are well within the reach of the average
third-world peasant. Many new products such as fertilizers
and pesticides are misused for lack of necessary technical
knowledge. In short, a wider spread of technological
knowledge both at the level of the research institute and the
average farmer is required if the politics of food as an
exploitative weapon is to be blunted and the technology of
food production is to be brought into the affirmative service
of promoting human rights.

10. A number of points concerning ethical aspects of the
right to development were stressed in the 1978 UN study on
development as a human right.25 Since science and
technology are a major component of the concept of
development, every one of these propositions would apply to
science and technology and the sharing of such knowledge,
which is universal in its nature. There is thus a firm
ethical base, soundly grounded in international law and its
evolving norms, for the proposition that the shrinking world
in which we live needs to be protected, for our common
benefit, by treating science and technology not as a private
preserve but as a universal inheritance.

Inadequacies of the Law

The dynamic growth of science and technology has outstripped
the ability of the law to control it. Both legal procedures and
legal concepts have proved unequal to the challenge.

Any study of legal inadequacies would have to concentrate on
four important aspects: structures, concepts, procedures, and
personnel. Quite often all of these in colonial and post-colonial
contexts still bear the stamp of their colonial origins, and are
thus suited basically to the societies of the West.

A formalized legal structure, with formal and expensive
procedures and legal concepts tailored to the needs of the
individualist, property-owning Western society, are hardly
adequate for guarding against technology's potential for damaging
human rights or for assisting in the transference of appropriate
technology to the third world. This is an important roadblock on
the way to turning technology to the affirmative service of human
rights in those societies.26

Even in Western societies courts are recognized as not being
suitable agents for the monitoring of technology or for
determining in advance whether a given technology is suitable.
Yet such questions tend often to come before the courts. Other
agencies are required for this, as, in general, a court looks
back at a past event rather than forward to the future. Value
judgments, resource allocations, and community priorities are not
appropriate matters for courts. Moreover, judges are not trained
in science and technology, and therefore lack the expertise with
which to judge the increasing proportion of technology-related
disputes which come before them.

Against this background, the inadequacy of formal court
structures and procedures to meet third-world conditions becomes
even more apparent. Adversarial litigation does not provide for
representation of the public interest but only for that of the
two contending parties. It produces a finding which is effective
only between the two parties and is not necessarily related to
social needs. It aims at finding which of two parties should win
by the rules of the game rather than at ascertaining the truth.
Its procedures are expensive and dilatory, whereas technology
often requires quick perception and action. Evidentiary rules are
often archaic and exclude for formal reasons many considerations
which could be of real value in fact-finding. The thalidomide
case provided an excellent example of the inadequacy of old
procedures to deal with a great social issue resulting from
technology. Thus, a decision of the British House of Lords had to
be discarded recently by the European Court of Human Rights in
order to enable publication in the public interest of material
which the British courts had shut out on grounds of legal
procedure and privilege.

Old concepts of the law are likewise proving inadequate.
Concepts of privacy and physical trespass were worked out before
the days of surveillance devices, "bugging," and
computers. Laissez-faire principles in scientific research are
still accepted without limitation, despite the public interest in
science and technological matters. Concepts of unrestricted
private property are still unthinkingly applied by courts and
judges.

Many third-world societies still believe that their courts and
legal systems can carry burdens in the scientific and
technological age which they were never designed to bear. In this
belief they refrain from constructing the new structures and
instrumentalities which are needed to monitor technology and make
it harmonize with the needs of people. The existence of this
obstacle must be more widely realized if science and technology
are to serve human rights more affirmatively in third-world
societies.

It will be necessary for a special study to be made
identifying legal obstacles that stand in the way of the
realization of these objectives. Work has already been done in
relation to development by such centres as the International
Centre for Law and Development to identify legal obstacles to the
realization of alternative development strategies. This work has
studied the ways in which those who desire to preserve the status
quo on the developmental and technological fronts use law as a
means of obstructing change.

The problem is both a national and an international one, and
the study undertaken will thus have to be in the fore of domestic
law as well as international law. There will also need to be a
study of the ways in which co-operation can be achieved among
domestic legal systems in eliminating these obstacles. More
specifically, studies will be needed of ways of building into
legal structures in developing countries a greater control over
production and the processing of information. Other areas where
greater legal control will be required will be in relation to
control of trading relations and control of prices.

In the last section of this chapter we consider the
reorientation of lawyers' attitudes that will be necessary for
this purpose.

SOME DESIDERATA

The Human Factor

In a programme on human rights and development we cannot
afford to lose sight also of the central fact that in all
development processes one of the most important aspects is the
human factor. In fact this has sometimes been described as the
missing factor in development because it tends so easily to be
overlooked. This human resource consists of the basic skills of
the workforce, the administrative skills, the social structure of
the rural sector, and the expertise already contained within the
scientific and technological communities, however small, in these
countries. It is important that all these resources should be
marshalled as part of the general effort towards making these
societies receptive to the better impacts of the new
technologies.

It is to be remembered also that, although in Western
countries with a tradition of three or four centuries of
industrial development there has been built up over the centuries
an appropriate infrastructure for the spread of technology, in
the developing world this long process is now being compressed
within a very short timeframe. If the beneficial effects of the
new technologies do not reach those who can best benefit from
them, this is a principal cause. Much of the effort that we shall
be putting into the use of new technologies will be dissipated in
the absence of due attention to the human-resources aspect of
development.

Traditional technology, rich especially in relation to
agricultural activity, embodies the wisdom of generations. The
tendency to cast it aside without due examination under the
impact of modern technologies, such as high-level fertilizers and
Western machinery, should be resisted. This is a rich human
resource which needs to be considered and sufficiently used.

As the Brandt Commission observed after a wide-ranging survey
of the concept of development:

This Commission did not try to redefine development, but we
agreed (among other things) that the focus has to be not on
machines or institutions but on people. A refusal to accept alien
models unquestioningly is in fact a second phase of
decolonization. We must not surrender to the idea that the whole
world should copy the models of highly industrialized countries.27

Raising the Political Priority of Development

Another aspect to which the Human Rights Commission should
give its attention is the means of raising the political priority
of development, both in the developed world and in the developing
world. In the developed world there is a strong feeling that the
assistance given for the process of development finds its way
into the wrong hands and that much of it is frittered away.
Consequently there is the feeling that money spent on such forms
of assistance is not money that truly filters into the process of
development. In the developing countries themselves there is a
sentiment developing that assistance given in this way is in fact
a means of increasing economic and political control over the
recipient country. An effort needs to be mounted to ensure that
both these criticisms will be met by appropriate corrective
action. This can assist in countering the growing resistance now
discernible in the developed countries, both in government and in
public attitudes, towards the giving of assistance which does not
really reach its target beneficiaries. Moreover, if assistance in
relation to technology comes without economic or political
strings, its acceptability and impact in the developing world
will be all the stronger. Studies of the extent to which
development assistance is frittered away or made contingent to
benefits to the donors will be useful pointers to the way in
which these abuses can be minimized in the future. With a
reduction of these abuses the political priority of development
will rise.

At the same time the communication apparatus which is now
growing up in the developing countries can also be used to
spread, not only among political leaders but also among the
people of those countries, the need for development aid to be
received in an independent fashion, without political or economic
strings attached to it.

Self-help

Self-help groups need also to be generated, not only in local
areas but also in relation to particular industries. The
communication technology available already in developing
countries has not been used sufficiently for the purpose of
generating the necessary concern and interest, which would result
in viable self-help groups. There is a feeling that nothing one
can do will halt the inevitable, and the resulting frustration
needs to be countered. Demonstrations of the ways in which new
technology can be used and new products generated need also to be
taken to the rural areas, as well as to the workplace. A new work
ethic and a new self-confidence must emerge.

Food as a Human Right

Work needs to be done in the human rights field to elevate the
status of the right to food. The UNU has done promising work in
this regard. Approaches to the problem of hunger have taken many
forms, and a useful summary of the different approaches is
contained in the chapter by Thomas J. Marchione in the UNU
volume, Food as a Human Right. The five approaches set out here
are the epidemological approach, the ecological approach, the
econometric approach, the structural approach, and the advocacy
approach. In each of these there is a technological element, and
the Commission would perhaps like to consider the ways in which
the technology relevant to each of these approaches is harnessed
in the course of making available this basic human right.

Training of Personnel

The training of personnel for development purposes is an
important facet which needs attention. This may seem too obvious
to stress, but one criticism that can be made of many of these
programmes is that they tend to be European- or American-centred.
It takes time for a selected trainee to acclimatize himself or
herself to the social and linguistic milieu in which he or she is
to receive training. One area that needs to be explored is the
way in which training courses can be planned within the region
concerned. This will not only have the advantage of making the
trainees feel more at home but will also keep them closer to the
immediate problem and enable an exchange of experiences with
those who are similarly placed. The tendency to depend on foreign
expertise dies hard.

Law Reform

It is important that the services of lawyers in developing
countries be enlisted to serve the needs of turning technology
towards the furtherance of human rights. There is much that needs
to be restructured in the fields of legal concepts, procedures,
and structures. Moreover, the attitudes of lawyers themselves
need to be reoriented, for their thinking is often cast in a
predominantly Western mould by reason of the Western-oriented
training they have received.

All this is vitally important to development, as one of the
principal roadblocks on the way to development is presented by
outmoded legal concepts, structures, and procedures.

In other words a new third-world jurisprudence must be
developed. Hopeful steps in this direction have already been
taken. 28 In the words of Professor Marasinghe,

It is arguable that one of the roles of law in development
should be seen as the integrator of ecological, cultural, social,
economic, institutional, and political dimensions of a given
society, so that the diverse trends and aspirations in each of
these fields could be synthesized in a way that the society as a
whole could evolve into a cohesive social unit.29

In the words of a distinguished former President of the
International Court of Justice, in his foreword to the same
volume, the lawyer will have something of each of the following
roles to play:

All these considerations lead us to envisage the possible role
of law and the lawyer in this great task ahead of the nation. Is
the lawyer, on whom the burden will likely devolve, to be just a
utilitarian in search of the greatest happiness of the greatest
number, an analytical jurist primarily concerned with concepts, a
social engineer preoccupied with how law affects man's social
interests, a functionalist anxious to ascertain the functioning
of legal rules, a realist sold on the idea that psychology is of
the essence of the judicial process, a Pericles engaged as a
policy-maker wisely dispensing laws, or a plumber skilled only as
a technocrat whose main interest is in "lawyers"' law?30

It is idle to speak of developing human rights unless we
enlist the co-operation of the legal profession in each country,
for lawyers can be a great help to the cause, just as they can
also be great obstructionists.

CASE-STUDY PROJECTS

I would like to conclude this paper by referring to a very
practical problem in which I happen to be involved and which
clearly illustrates the importance of using modern technology for
the purpose of promoting human rights. In the island of Nauru
phosphate lands have been mined out by various occupying powers
from the beginning of this century, leaving sizeable portions of
the island with nothing more than bare coral pinnacles, very much
resembling a moonscape. A large area of that little island is now
unfit both for human occupation and for any other purpose, and
the inhabitants of the island do not enjoy the basic human right
of enjoyment of their natural environment. A Commission appointed
by the Government of Nauru is examining ways in which modern
technology can restore this barren land to human use.

This is eminently a situation where science and technology can
be affirmatively used for the furtherance of human rights.
Article 13 of the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States
of December 1974 clearly states that every state has the right to
benefit from the advances and developments in science and
technology for the acceleration of its economic and social
development. Article 9 of the same document points out that all
states have the responsibility to co-operate in the economic,
social, cultural, scientific, and technological fields for the
promotion of economic and social progress throughout the world,
especially that of the developing countries.

The situation in which the island of Nauru is now placed
requires, then, that a cooperative effort be made by all nations
to assist in bringing to its aid all the resources that modern
technology can offer, not merely because it is an environmental
problem involving the human rights of the people of Nauru, but
also because it is an environmental problem which affects the
people of the world generally - the sort of problem that could
well exist or be duplicated in other societies.

It may be worthwhile to consider cases of this nature as
specific case-study projects with a view to seeing in what way
the immense benefits of technology can be harnessed towards the
solution of a problem of great consequence to human rights. In
addressing a problem such as this we may well find not only
answers to the specific problem, but also answers in the form or
methodology that can be used for the solution of others.

The above represents some of the ideas which perhaps may be
pertinent to the tasks the Commission will have in hand. It would
be too ambitious to undertake an examination of them all, but it
may be that some at least of these ideas will be considered
important enough to warrant adoption by the Human Rights
Commission as part of its programme. It is believed by the author
that attention to these problems will certainly assist in
improving the total benefit that developing countries will
receive from the vast movements in science and technology that
are now taking place, with resulting impact upon all societies,
especially those of the developing world.